Den of Thieves
by halfreks
Summary: The ones you forgot about. / Or, how the Hunger Games begins.


**warnings: violence, death? it is a hunger games fic**

 **i.**

In District 6, hungry hands clamour for food and do not think about repercussions.

They were left ravaged by the War, in bits and broken pieces; crop lands burst into ashes and dark smoke and fields of the dead, the anguished, the bloody.

 _There is drought_ , they say, _drought and fires still left over_. _Our children are dying_ , they say.

The Capitol cares for your plight!

It is grain. Grain and oil. A pittance, a beggar's lot. The Capitol calls it "tesserae," and it is a kindness, a blessing.

Here is what they want in return: their children's souls for the taking.

An extra slip of paper, tossed into the mix, a greater shot at dying.

They call it a Game, a Great Game, one they will all be forced to sit through and watch, a glorious retribution for their crimes against the Capitol.

Two children, they say lazily, from each District. One boy, one girl. Only one can survive.

District Six does not care much for the specifics. They want prosperity and food, food to fill the gaping mouths of the hungry, to keep the skin from being plucked off of their ribs by Starvation.

What good are their children, they realise, if they cannot put their idle hands to work? Take them, take them! Less mouths to feed, less bodies to burn. Only two? They may take more, if they will it, more from a suffocating population of invalids. Their children are sick, they say, and dying. What do they give to society?

They are under the impression that this is the last sacrifice. This, and the war is over.

The children (a boy of fourteen, a girl of seventeen) go willingly, when their names are called. At least they fatten their cows before they slaughter them.

 **ii**.

In District 4, the first volunteer is claimed.

The Capitol forget his name. It is his sacrifice that will be remembered. They did not write this into the rules, this idea, but they like it. It makes their Reapings more unpredictable, it makes for better viewing.

The boy is a curly-haired martyr. He does not have much personality (or looks, or talent, undoubtedly) but his design allows him to provoke some sense of feeling, some pity, perhaps, or sympathy.

Their collection of tributes is the beauty of it all: their wild and vicious monsters; (snarling creatures, angry and violent beasts) their trembling mortals - dead within the hour - and their heroes, their underdogs, their sweet and brave children, off into the jaws of Death.

Each with their own motivations, their own anxieties, the same nervous tics and fidgets, weaknesses and strengths. They are not scared of death, but they are terrified by the thought of nothingness.

The audience picks their favourites. The show will begin, soon enough, but the characters must be exciting. That is the emotion of it all: the dependence placed upon the win and the crucifying pain felt by the loss.

The Capitol citizens have never had entertainment of this sort. It will be a catharsis, after the horrors of the war.

They must be attached to their tributes - that's what they are calling them now, a Capitol woman on the Committee offered the name - but they must see them as idols, not as humans. It is this that entertains. If they are calling it a Game and not a Slaughter, it is players they are murdering and not children.

Tributes is a far more flowery word than sacrifices. There is little reasoning behind this. Perhaps it is the sense of honour. Perhaps, the omission of a violent sentience.

It makes it sound like their deaths mean something. By all accounts they don't, but it will be a fantastic watch.

They are legends in the making, these tributes. They are the first page in the history book, the ink running through the pages like hunted men. They are the first drops of crimson blood, the red grass upon the moors.

Their names will be forgotten, but every year will be a replication of their extinction. Every year will be their reminder.

There is beauty in mortality, sometimes.

 **iii**.

From District 7, the first murderer is crafted.

They have not introduced training yet, or interviews, or even sponsors. These are the eccentricities that will come later. This is their practice run, their experiment. They cannot afford luxuries.

The tributes have had their last nights, their last suppers. They have prayed to their deities, prayed for some form of mercy. It does not catch them until they are in the arena.

Hope is a fickle thing.

The end of the countdown is their shock into reality, the blood in their eardrums, the steady thump of their hearts. Nobody moves. Their eyes twitch and focus upon each other, waiting for somebody to dare to make a move.

It is like this for barely minutes, a confused and awkward silence, an anxiety shared amongst them all. Stumbling and fumbling, caught unaware, unsure of what to do - to kill?

The boy from District 7 picks up a rock. They are still listless, but they follow his movements like nervous animals, waiting for the denouement.

The moment is over quickly.

He smashes the rock into a girl's skull and they all begin to run.

 **iv**.

The broadcast stutters here, then stops completely.

There are black screens across Panem; an apparent end to the brutality. Millions of people quietly breathe out, and look away. They think it is over.

The building of workers from District 3 responsible are executed by the Capitol.

They have learnt their lesson. The war taught it well. There shall be no mercy for rebels.

 **v**.

The first victim was from District 8. Her name is inconsequential. It marks more of her to come, hundreds of dead children in their future.

She is a catalytic event. Two are killed during the lapse in the screening, three more are wounded. The Games are not refined - not yet - and for now, they are quick and rough, heavy hands and fumbling cameras trying to capture the whole of it.

The Capitol hid the knives, around the arena. They thought it would increase suspense, make the Game last longer. There is no speed in suffering.

The tributes use their bodies instead. Biting, kicking, screaming, yowling. The arena is too small for hiding places. They are everywhere and everywhere is them. It is difficult to ignore the smells of rotting corpses that have not yet been carried away; the stench of sweat hanging thickly in the air and the noise; the impenetrable noise of violence and fear.

They will call it a bloodbath, in the years to come. They will put out their weapons in plain sight. It is difficult to empathise with man in bestial form. They are not like humans, these children, with their atavistic proclivities. They are more like monsters: sadistic creatures intent upon survival and nothing more.

It will make the Capitol nauseous to watch this discourtesy. They will much prefer their murderers with manners, or some sense of showmanship.

The clock beats steadily. It has been nearly an hour. Six of the tributes are dead already and five more are slowly dying.

Death is a slow and painful game. They should have prayed for something quick, to carry them off into the beyond.

 **vi**.

It is a girl from 10 who discovers the first knife.

The arena is a bare and barren place. There are a handful of trees and misshapen bushes, oddly-placed and faraway. She came to see the dying, the place where they have been designated to end.

She has not killed yet. The boy from 2 had his hands around her throat, some minutes - perhaps hours, she has lost track of time - beforehand. He was squeezing as much as he could, she thinks, though his eyes were closed and his mouth screwed up tight, like a lock. She fought him off. She scratched and scratched at him until her nails felt bloody, until he cursed and swore and leapt off her like a cat.

They are supposed to murder, she supposes. It must be intrinsic to survival. The inevitable conclusion that so many species are drawn to.

The boy from 12 rolls over, a low and soft moan escaping from his lips. They are pale, an odd mixture of pinkish-white, but a familiarity to her, a staple of her home district.

Death is a permanence. It is perhaps the only thing that is truly ubiquitous.

She can see the blood trickling steadily from his stomach. In her experience there is some sort of masochistic pleasure to be derived from watching the shape of your own blood, but he is too absorbed in his suffering - fragile and weak, but with beating heart still, with struggling lungs and tiny, agile breath.

There is too much time in the world; and yet not enough.

It is not a knife, she realises on closer inspection (she has leant into the bush, to catch out this strange silvery mass in it's being) but more of a dagger, or what she supposes would be labelled as one. She has never seen such a thing before. The men fought the war with heavy rifles and bombs and the fragments of such things, not with ornate pieces of silverware.

It seems almost childlike, an oddly fitting testament to their situation. A mockery made of them. The Capitol, in all of their exorbitant cruelty.

She picks it up. It is not heavy.

She thinks that perhaps we are truly primeval beings. There is not much more to us other than survival.

 **vii**.

There is irony in this then, when she is murdered by the boy from 9, whose weapon of choice is merely a rock.

She crumples like paper, lips half-open as if poised to say something, to regret, perhaps.

The other tributes finish her off eagerly. They'll decide that she was targeted for her knife. It is too kind of an armament, too dignified.

What sense is there in putting on airs and graces, when she is just like the rest of them?

And now she is dead, or dying, or somewhere near to it. There are four left, carved in two days of work.

They are thinning and fading, this herd. It has been a slow and arduous battle. The Capitol is losing interest now, there is a growing banality in this violence. They do not want more murder. They want their winner, their tale of inspiration and hope.

They want the others dead. Dead and it all over with, so the whole thing can begin again.

 **viii**.

His hands are pulsing and writhing. He does not look, he cannot look.

This boy from 2, he has killed. Twice before and now once again. He is their winner. Victor, the Capitol decides; it is more lyrical, more fluorescent upon the tongue. It fits with the theme.

They take a while to collect him. Their hovercraft is not a faultless model. It is a remnant from the war, had it's once valued place in their military. Now it is cluttering old junk, an afterthought to their great and spectacular Game. They had forgotten. That there was an After.

Perhaps the boy has forgotten too, because he does not move. He is some listless being, only watching the world around him, nothing more. Their arena is bloody, filled with rotting corpses and indeterminable odours, silent and ugly and barren.

A carnage lays by his feet. He shuts his eyes and pretends he is in some better and holier place than this.

He has escaped their Game, he thinks. They are all slaughtered and he is still breathing. The first Victor. May there be many more to come.

 **ix**.

They cannot distinguish the remains of the District 1 tributes.

There are graves for them anyway, solid marble with the names marked on solemnly.

They have promised to never forget. The Capitol will drill this out of them, soon enough. There will be too much to remember, too much to want to remember.

There will be fresh violence, fresh blood. Years upon years of blood. This will be what they remember. They will not remember the names.

This shall be their only salvation: they will nurture the best stock to put into battle. Children who will murder easily. Children who will murder without qualms.

They do not think they can win this Game. It has been said that there are no winners, but this is a falsehood.

The Capitol will win with each passing year. They will be the only victors. An annual murder of twenty-three children will be held and the Capitol will smile and clap their hands in satisfaction.

Glory and power will be bred out of the Districts. They shall leave nothing but compliance.

 **x**.

The girl from District 5 was twelve years old.

There is no redemption to be found in the murder of children

 **xi**.

In District 11, there is a quiet funeral. They bury their children next to their soldiers. They do not think there is much difference in their fallen.

The mockingjays do not sing for a whole day. The people sit at home in a humbling reflection, a merciful prayer.

The world is not complete any more. It tastes like ashes and destruction, forewarnings of objects to come. The rebellion was built upon a reclamation of freedom but they are still marionettes of the Capitol, offering up their sacrifices.

District 11 is not complete. It is a broken half of something once whole. Faded rust and dust, a slowly decaying land.

Thousands of their people were slaughtered during the war. They had their horrors broadcast to the district, the murders of their soldiers, the murders of their children. They would like to forget, but life nowadays seems devoted to remembrance. Remembrance and repetition.

They're all just clinging onto the seconds. All the shattered pieces of the time they have left. They kiss their children sweeter at night, wake them earlier in the mornings. Death has never been more inevitable.

 **xii**.

There are crows circling the horizon of District 13, where a city of heartbeats stay undiscovered.

Their deal with the Capitol complete, their children safe from the perils of murder. They did not show the citizens the Game. There is no glory in guilt.

They will hide their nuclear weapons and lock up their houses. This is a district that never existed. It is miles of rolling land and red dust, a people wiped out, a graveyard.

They will live a thousand lifetimes. They will know their troubles, in sickness and health. Death cannot help but be biological. They have their ducky silence and security, but they do not have their freedom, still.

Panem never will quite figure out what the word means.

 **xiii**.

The worst of it all is in District 12, where they do not bury their dead.

They do not believe in beginnings. Only endings.

They think this game will be over soon. The Capitol caught, the battle won. They throw the bodies in unmarked land and allow them rot.

The animals of the wood are thin with hunger. They will grow fat with flesh. Panem et circenses. They will grow fat with flesh and blood and wine. They will be wild, they will be unruly. They will slip and fall from their thrones. Their buildings and worlds will crumble.

The universe is mortal.

In District 12, they know that power does not last forever. They do not mourn beginnings.

They know that everything has an ending.

* * *

 **Notes** : this is kinda pretentious I know. I wrote it a while ago and never put it up, but it's up now so...uh...enjoy? Title comes from "Us" by Regina Spektor.


End file.
